Prep School Spends $500,000 to Destroy ALL BOOKS in its Library

[snot]

From http://www.engadget.com/2009/09/05/boston-prep-school-nixes-all-the-books-in-its-library-replaces/ :

"Replacing the books will be a high tech 'learning center,' housing three flat screen televisions, laptops, 18 e-readers, and a coffee bar. . . . excuse us for our cynicism, but unless there are only 18 students at Cushing Academy, we're pretty sure the e-reader supply is going to come up short."

More at the link.

[Statistical]

1. Headline not supported by the facts.

What makes you think they destroyed the books?

The new digital library is what cost $500K.

Likely they donated the books (possibly to a school or library) that couldn't afford to expand their collection.

[Davis_X_Machina]

3. Precisely. From the article...

....

The academy’s administrators have decided to discard all their books and have given away half of what stocked their sprawling stacks - the classics, novels, poetry, biographies, tomes on every subject from the humanities to the sciences.

Tracy and other administrators said the books took up too much space and that there was nowhere else on campus to stock them. So they decided to give their collection - aside from a few hundred children’s books and valuable antiquarian works - to local schools and libraries.

This is a long-running problem on DU. I take consolation from contemplating that if jumping to conclusions ever becomes an Olympic sport, a DU'er will bring home gold.

[snot]

7. [self-delete; see below]

[Fire_Medic_Dave]

9. Doesn't excuse lying and saying they are DESTROYING all the books.

[Statistical]

11. Not a single book?

You mean you have never wanted to read a single book in public domain (classics)?

http://www.feedbooks.com/

All available for free.

[snot]

22. I didn't say that; I said they had none of the titles I want to read NOW.

I don't recall off-hand what they were, but they weren't terribly obscure.

[drm604]

2. This is insane.

So they can't check a book out and take it back to the dorm, or do they have e-readers wired to the library in every dorm room? Do they even have digital versions of every book currently in the library?

Even if you could somehow justify replacing all of the books with e-readers, why destroy the books? Especially when it costs half a million to do so? Have a book sale or donate them to other libraries.

[Fire_Medic_Dave]

4. It really helps to read. They did donate the books.

Tracy and other administrators said the books took up too much space and that there was nowhere else on campus to stock them. So they decided to give their collection - aside from a few hundred children’s books and valuable antiquarian works - to local schools and libraries.

http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2009/09/04/a_library_without_the_books/?page=2

[drm604]

14. Fair enough

but the article linked by the OP didn't say that so reading it doesn't help. It didn't say anything at all about what was happening to the books. However the subject line of the post stated that $500,000 was being spent to destroy the books. I assumed, incorrectly, that the poster had a clue. My mistake.

[Statistical]

12. That is the point. They didn't destroy ANY books, the OP is misleading n/t

[drm604]

15. And the article doesn't correct that.

I don't understand where the OP got the idea that books were being destroyed. The article doesn't say anything about what happened to the books.

[TomClash]

5. I find it hard to believe the Cushing Academy would destroy books nt

[Fire_Medic_Dave]

8. Good because they donated them to other schools.

[TomClash]

27. That makes sense nt

[create.peace]

6. hyperbole not needed here, just the facts, man! nt

[FSogol]

10. I don't think you understand the word "destroy." n/t

[snot]

13. Pls pardon; didn't mean to distort; but the point is,

18 e-readers for a whole school.

$500K.

And I don't know what kind of e-readers they're getting, but I looked at buying a Kindle within the last month, and checked a number of book titles to see if they'd be available, and not a single one was offered.

PS: I do not see where in the article it says they are giving the books away, although I hope that is true -- is just says the headmaster is "ridding the school's library of every single one of its books." I just googled and nothing popped up explaining what happened to the books, although one article mentioned there were 20,000 of them. If you have additional info, pls feel free to share.

[Fire_Medic_Dave]

17. Were any books destroyed?

[66 dmhlt]

24. "No books were injured in the making of this post"

[BlooInBloo]

18. Hard to understand how your distortion could be accidental when the article...

flatly contradicts what your OP claims.

[snot]

20. Pls quote the language you say "flatly contradicts"?

[Fire_Medic_Dave]

25. Here you go.

Tracy and other administrators said the books took up too much space and that there was nowhere else on campus to stock them. So they decided to give their collection - aside from a few hundred children’s books and valuable antiquarian works - to local schools and libraries.

http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles...

[snot]

36. Thank you; glad to know it; that did not turn up when I googled.

[Fire_Medic_Dave]

37. There is a direct link to it from your engadget link.

In addition the story is the top response to a Google news search for Cushing Academy.

[Justyce]

16. There's nothing like curling up with a good eReader screen.

So now they can't check out books to bring home & can only read when they can find an available eReader...?

[Retrograde]

28. and replacing them all again when the technology changes

They may be old fashioned, but books are readable without special technologies.

I have a Kindle, it has its uses, but I also have books. I don't have to worry about the latter's technology going obsolete.

[surrealAmerican]

19. This is a prep school.

Every student there likely has their own laptop and/or e-reader already. They only need a few in the "library" for kids who've left theirs elsewhere.

[MadHound]

21. Sad, they are getting rid of a vast store of knowledge of information

One that can't, and won't be replaced with electronic resource. Many, many books haven't and won't be digitalized. Many electronic databases only go back a certain number of years (many only to the dawn of the digitalizing age, the mid nineties).

There is a parallel between the digitizing of books and the digitizing of music. When CD's swept the recording industry, many amazing, valuable recordings were consigned to the dust bin of history, and simply weren't digitized. Now it is impossible to find these recordings. The same thing is going to happen with the print medium. We're going to lose another true treasure.

And when future generations try to discover the history of this era, well, it will all be lost, ethereal bits and bytes swept away by the wind of history. Another real shame.

[Fire_Medic_Dave]

26. How is that? They can still read the books.

[MadHound]

31. If we continue down the digitizing path, all of our libraries will be lost

And paper copies will be non-existent. Historians are already running into this problem in the area of primary documents. With more and more work being done on computers, there are fewer and fewer paper primary documents. Electronic documents become corrupted over time, stick in a floppy from fifteen years ago and it probably won't work. Not to mention that there are fewer and fewer machines that actually read floppies, or any of those other early computer formats. Now, fast forward one hundred years or more. All that electromagnetic data will be horribly corrupted, and functioning machines to read the correct format will be almost nil.

Paper has always been, and continues to be the best method for transmitting information across the tides of history. Sadly, we will be leaving a huge hole in that transmission.

[Fire_Medic_Dave]

32. I guess it's a good thing the paper copies still exist.

[MadHound]

34. Yeah, except for those primary documents

Emails and such. As I said earlier, historians are already running into problems due to this. I imagine that shortly we'll see only electronic publishing of all books and documents, that's the direction that we're heading. Then where will those paper copies be? Oh, yeah, there won't be any:shrug:

[Fire_Medic_Dave]

35. I doubt it.

[FarCenter]

39. Almost everything that is written is discarded

And it always was on paper. The historians' "primary documents" are highly selective and unusual for having been saved.

Most written communications was put in the wastebasket after it was read. Much of what was saved, was eventually discarded when organizations ceased to exist or systematically pruned their archives.

Digital communications have a much higher probability of being saved because it is so inexpensive to do so. Also, multiple generations of perfect copies are easy to make, while older technologies, such as microfilming paper, are subject to deterioration.

In fact, the acid paper of most of the books in libraries and the deterioration of microfilm are the two biggest problems going forward. Unless digitized, most of the 20th century will crumble to dust.

[Statistical]

40. To bad humans are incapable of adapting.... oh wait we can.

Ever heard of self describing data. For example xml. The data is written in such a method that it contains both the data and how to read it.

Corruption? Why would there be only one copy of anything now that we have a world wide data network (internet)?

Modern hard media is much more reliable than floppies (an invention from 1969). Technology improves.

A Bluray drive produced today can still read CD-ROM which are a format from 27 years prior.

So hypothetically is say 10 years we stop making drives that can read CD it would require librarians to change physical format aprox once every 30+ years.

Is it a challenge? Sure but it isn't one that can't be overcome. This is the same species that put a man on the moon.

[SmileyRose]

23. THANKS - now we all know engadget.com lies.

[donco6]

29. False OP title.

You need to fix it.

[Peregrine Took]

30. DIrty little library secret - students only go to the stacks when they

are told by prof. they HAVE to do a paper using books.


99 times out of a 100 - they head straight to the computer for everything - homework,sports scores, games, porn, email, job searching, etc.

Books are sitting getting dusty in library after library. I love them but the younger folks - not so much.

[FarCenter]

33. You can fit every book that a prep school student should read on a few DVDs

There are over 400,000 new titles published each year (in English), but 99% of them are not worth keeping after the first read.

[geek_sabre]

38. only 18 non-children's books had been checked out in an entire year

Perhaps 18 e-readers isn't too far off.

Perhaps we should read the school's rationale, and debate the merits, rather the strawman of misleading post titles:

http://www.cushing.org/misc/library.shtml